Excuses--Cookies and Cake

I'll admit it. I have a problem. And that problem is baking unhealthy things and not finding anyone to eat them.

Is it weird that when I do bake things, I honestly don't do it because I want to eat them myself? Oh, sure, I want a cookie or slice or bowl or so, but I would be just as happy sending my experiments off to some event that returns my plate ravaged over with nothing but crumbs.

In any case, here are my latest excuses for trying new recipes.

The Book Club: Butter Pecan Shortbread Cookies

I first experimented with shortbread cookies last year. Did you know that the basic recipe has nothing but butter, sugar, and flour? That's it. So I had a book club meeting coming up (we were reading The Goose Girl, which is a beautiful, engaging, worthwhile read if you haven't yet read it). For some reason, shortbread cookies seemed a nice, classy, bookish choice. I dunno, maybe it's like people who see numbers in color. Short bread cookies, especially butter pecan ones, seem like a very literary type of dessert to me.

(Oh, and if you desperately want more details or the recipe, please let me know.) Here's how it began:

Chopping pecans, of course! Cambrie had so much fun; that is a real, non-mommy-coerced smile on her face. Then came the mixing, cutting in of the butter, shaping (you do the edges like you would a pie crust), baking, and cooling.

Since it was for other people and not just to munch on at home, I threw the cookies on a glass plate and added some pecans to make it fancy. And voila!

Butter Pecan Shortbread Cookies

They turned out pretty good, too! I was happy with the recipe and the end result, so I think I'll tuck this one away for future use.

On to my second excuse.

Patrick's Birthday: German Chocolate Cake

This year for his birthday, Patrick wanted German Chocolate Cake. Again, what better excuse to experiment? I decided to go all out and make the frosting from scratch, too. Since the whole process was kind of long and tedious, I actually made the frosting the day before. My other little trick I stole offline: I stuck circles of wax paper in the bottom of the cake pans. It made cake removal easy peasy!

When I made the batter, it took a LOT of stirring and beating. I had to alternate adding wet and dry ingredients, beating well each time, and then I had to beat a bunch of egg whites and add those to the end batter. The end result looked promising, but there's a secret hidden in these pictures. My cake actually failed horribly.

German Chocolate Cake--Patrick turned 26, not 10, by the way.

It looked pretty, but after I (carefully, gently) took the fully risen beautifully browned cake layers out of the oven, they shrunk like nobody's business. I should have gotten more pictures; when it was all put together, the cake was very moist and very dense. Eating it was actually like eating a German Chocolate Brownie cake. I was confused and a little disappointed, but I wasn't too worried because 1) I don't really like cake anyways, so the brownie texture was a plus for me, and 2) Patrick must have liked it since he kept saying he never wants German Chocolate Cake from a box again--and that's saying something, since he loved it before. I'll just have to make sure he only requests this particular dessert once every five years or so. It is kind of a long process. Happy Birthday, Patrick! :-)

So it's only a matter of time before my next excuse crops up. Until then I'll just experiment with other new and exciting recipes (I made Chicken and Sausage Gumbo for the first time last night; it was good, but I wish someone had told this poor northerner that okra was slimy!).